A NEW EPISTEMIC UTILITY ARGUMENT FOR THE PRINCIPAL PRINCIPLE

AbstractJim Joyce has presented an argument for Probabilism based on considerations of epistemic utility. In a recent paper, I adapted this argument to give an argument for Probablism and the Principal Principle based on similar considerations. Joyce's argument assumes that a credence in a true proposition is better the closer it is to maximal credence, whilst a credence in a false proposition is better the closer it is to minimal credence. By contrast, my argument in that paper assumed (roughly) that a credence in a proposition is better the closer it is to the objective chance of that proposition. In this paper, I present an epistemic utility argument for Probabilism and the Principal Principle that retains Joyce's assumption rather than the alternative I endorsed in the earlier paper. I argue that this results in a superior argument for these norms.

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MINIMALISM AND THE LIMITS OF WARRANTED ASSERTABILITY MANEUVERS

Episteme ◽

10.1017/epi.2014.15 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 11 (3) ◽

pp. 245-260 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Blake Roeber

Keyword(s):

True Proposition ◽

High Stakes ◽

False Proposition ◽

Epistemological Question

AbstractContextualists and pragmatists agree that knowledge-denying sentences are contextually variable, in the sense that a knowledge-denying sentence might semantically express a false proposition in one context and a true proposition in another context, without any change in the properties traditionally viewed as necessary for knowledge. Minimalists deny both pragmatism and contextualism, and maintain that knowledge-denying sentences are not contextually variable. To defend their view from cases like DeRose and Stanley's high stakes bank case, minimalists like Patrick Rysiew, Jessica Brown, and Wayne Davis forward ‘warranted assertability maneuvers.’ The basic idea is that some knowledge-denying sentence seems contextually variable because we mistake what a speaker pragmatically conveys by uttering that sentence for what she literally says by uttering that sentence. In this paper, I raise problems for the warranted assertability maneuvers of Rysiew, Brown, and Davis, and then present a warranted assertability maneuver that should succeed if any warranted assertability maneuver will succeed. I then show how my warranted assertability maneuver fails, and how the problem with my warranted assertability maneuver generalizes to pragmatic responses in general. The upshot of my argument is that, in order to defend their view from cases like DeRose and Stanley's high stakes bank case, minimalists must prioritize the epistemological question whether the subjects in those cases know over linguistic questions about the pragmatics of various knowledge-denying sentences.

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Humean Objective Chance

Chance in the World ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190907419.003.0003 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 63-97

Author(s):

Carl Hoefer

Keyword(s):

Principal Principle ◽

Rational Agents ◽

The World ◽

Objective Chance ◽

The Right

In this chapter, Humean objective chance (HOC) is laid out and discussed using a number of examples. The theory can be summarized as follows: Chances are constituted by the existence of patterns in the mosaic of events in the world. These patterns are such as to make the adoption of credences identical to the chances rational in the absence of better information, if one is obliged to make guesses or bets concerning the outcomes of chance setups. The full set of objective chances in our world is a Best System composed of many kinds of chances, at various levels of scale and with varying kinds of support in the Humean base. What unifies all the chances is their ability to play the role of guiding credence, as codified in the Principal Principle. The Best System(s) involved in HOC are, as with Lewis, determined by a balance of simplicity and strength and fit; through examples, the right way to understand these notions is sketched. HOC is explicitly pragmatic and is tied to the needs and capacities of limited rational agents.

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Richard Robinson On Incorrigibility

Canadian Journal of Philosophy ◽

10.1080/00455091.1974.10716931 ◽

1974 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 199-200

Author(s):

James Ford

Keyword(s):

True Proposition ◽

False Proposition ◽

Law Of Excluded Middle ◽

The Law ◽

Excluded Middle

Richard Robinson has argued that “no consistent and useful and desirable meaning” can be given to the philosophical terms “corrigible” and “incorrigible” so long as one espouses a bivalent theory of truth with the law of excluded middle operative. The crux of his argument is that the corrigibility-incorrigibility distinction can be shown to be redundant since, in effect, incorrigibility is materially equivalent to truth and corrigibility materially equivalent to falsehood. Robinson understands the correcting of a proposition to consist in “abandoning one's belief in a false proposition and adopting its true contradictory instead. “ But given that it makes no sense to speak of correcting a true proposition, all true propositions are incapable of emendation simply by virtue of their being true, and all incorrigible propositions are by definition true.

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Metaphysical Preliminaries

Chance in the World ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190907419.003.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 1-46

Author(s):

Carl Hoefer

Keyword(s):

Laws Of Nature ◽

Subjective Probabilities ◽

Principal Principle ◽

Objective Chance ◽

The Way

The book argues that objective chance facts are grounded on the existence of patterns in the events found in our world’s Humean Mosaic (HM); and the chance facts so grounded will later be seen to be apt for guiding rational credences (subjective probabilities) in the way captured by the Principal Principle (PP). But what is this HM? What does it contain, and what does it leave out? What understanding of time is presupposed? The rest of the chapter discusses the idea of considering objective chance facts to be primitives of some sort, as most propensity views hold, or to be based on primitively (irreducibly) chancy laws of nature. After an extended attempt to explore what it could mean to postulate primitive chances or chancy laws, it is argued that no acceptable answer can be given. A tacit invocation of PP helps explain why philosophers often think they understand the meaning of primitive chance claims. The invocation of the PP is illegitimate, though, because there is no way to show that a bare primitive posit deserves to guide credence in the way captured by PP.

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Emergent Chance

The Nature of Contingency ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198846215.003.0004 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 98-144

Author(s):

Alastair Wilson

Keyword(s):

Quantum Mechanics ◽

Empirical Evidence ◽

Principal Principle ◽

Fundamental Level ◽

Main Challenge ◽

Objective Chance ◽

The Right ◽

Bridge Principles ◽

Metaphysics Of Modality

This chapter offers a theory of objective chance in the Everettian context, often seen as the main challenge facing EQM. By supplementing diverging EQM with quantum modal realist bridge principles connecting the physics of quantum mechanics with the metaphysics of modality, we obtain a package deal: Indexicalism. Indexicalist objective chance is an essentially self-locating phenomenon: chances are chances of self-location within the multiverse. I provide three arguments for Indexicalism: it establishes the right qualitative connections between chance and possibility, it establishes the right quantitative connection between chance and prediction, and it establishes the right epistemological story about how quantum mechanics is confirmed by empirical evidence. The resulting theory of chance is naturalistic and reductive; fundamental reality is deterministic, but chance arises at the non-fundamental level of Everett-worldbound perspectives. The theory provides unique resources for motivating an Everettian version of Lewis’s Principal Principle, helping to clarify at last the persistently mysterious connection between chance and rational credence.

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From Lewisian Chance to Humean Chance

Chance in the World ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190907419.003.0002 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 47-62

Author(s):

Carl Hoefer

Keyword(s):

System Approach ◽

System Analysis ◽

David Lewis ◽

Principal Principle ◽

The Past ◽

Good Account ◽

The World ◽

Objective Chance

This chapter introduces David Lewis’ highly influential views on objective chance, from his 1980 treatment of objective chance and the Principal Principle (PP) to his 1994 Humean Best System analysis of chance. Some unfortunate consequences of Lewis’ theory are discussed: (1) if the Best System of laws for the world has no probabilistic laws in it, then there are no objective chances in the world. (2) Physical determinism is incompatible with non-trivial objective chances. (3) Events in the past are “no longer chancy.” It is argued that a good account of chance can and should reject all three of these consequences. But two pillars of Lewis’ approach remain valid. First, his contention that the ability to demonstrably play the chance role captured by the PP is crucial for any account of the nature of objective chance. And second, his intuition that a Best System approach in which chance facts supervene on patterns in the Humean Mosaic is a promising approach vis-à-vis allowing such a demonstrable grounding of the PP.

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Conclusion

10.1093/oso/9780198802693.003.0011 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Ralph Wedgwood

Keyword(s):

Rational Choice ◽

Mental State ◽

Rational Belief ◽

True Proposition ◽

The Other ◽

Relevant Notion

It is explained how the conception of rationality proposed earlier in this book can set the agenda for the study of rational belief and rational choice. Part of the task will be to investigate the kind of ‘rational probability’ that was introduced in Chapter 9; the other part will be to study the conditions under which each kind of mental state counts as ‘correct’. There are reasons for thinking that the relevant notion of correctness must be such that in the case of belief, a correct belief is a belief in a true proposition, and in the case of choice, it is ‘akratic’ to choose something if one is fully confident that it is not correct to choose it. It is explained what light this approach could shed on the traditional issues about rational belief and rational choice.

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